IN THIS BANANA REPUBLIC, MRS. CLINTON COULDN’T GET INDICTED IF SHE TRIED, Kevin D. Williamson writes, comparing James Comey’s “oogedy-boogedy about how she didn’t really break the law” with the career-ending fates of Republicans Tom DeLay and Rick Perry:
DeLay and Perry were indicted in Travis County, Texas, which is run by Democrats who like to make ritual sacrifices of the occasional Republican politician. They know that they can do this with no fear of sanction from, say, Barack Obama’s Justice Department. The Democratic party in Texas is a criminal enterprise (my friend Michael Walsh describes the Democrats at large as a crime syndicate masquerading as a political party, which isn’t inaccurate) that is sustained by corruption and old-fashioned ward politics that would have been familiar to a Chicago boss in the 1920s or a denizen of Tammany Hall. The Democrats happen to run Washington, too, which is why Hillary Rodham Clinton knows that she can violate the law, at will, for obvious personal political reasons, with very little fear of official sanction. And the fact is, the Democrats prefer their politicians a little crooked, a little dirty. It helps them, a Chavista party constrained mainly by the temperamental (rather than ideological) conservatism of the American electorate, to make up in viciousness what they lack in policy ideas appropriate to the 21st century.
That lack of policy ideas isn’t really very important. The Left isn’t interested in policy; it is interested in power, and the things you can do with it, meaning rewarding one’s friends and punishing one’s enemies. Barack Obama has been, in his less guarded moments, fairly plain about that. For the Left, all justice is Wonderland justice: decision first, arguments afterward as necessary. There is seldom if ever any doubt about how the so-called liberals on the Supreme Court (who are not liberals at all) will vote on any question: They will vote the way the Left wants them to. Elena Kagan, you may recall, testified in her confirmation hearings that there is no constitutional right to same-sex marriage lurking in the penumbras to be discovered. Once confirmed, she reached a little deeper and pulled one out. Conservatives can never really guess which way a Kennedy or a Roberts is going to come down on a question, but you know how the judges of the Left are going to vote. Arguments do not matter; only outcomes matter.
Which brings us to this charming quote from Ruth Bader Ginsburg: “It’s likely that the next president, whoever she will be, will have a few appointments to make.” The article containing it is headlined, “AP interview: Ginsburg doesn’t want to envision a Trump win.”
As with Nixon in ’68, I suspect after last night, a lot more people are envisioning it. Or as this post from May by John Hinderaker at Power Line was headlined, “Electing Trump, One Riot at a Time.”